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Forum:Citing facts from personal communications/misc sources
Citing personal sources Following on from this discussion, a good point has been raised which I feel may need further discussion. Since this issue affects more than just the one article, I felt a forum post would be more appropriate. The issue at hand is how to cite information in articles that comes from personal communication with actors, production staff or other background sources that is perfectly legitimate information but hasn't actually been published anywhere, either on the internet or in print. As we all know Tom is brilliant when it comes to communicating with people in the industry and rightly so contributes the information to the relevant articles which helps build up Memory Alpha with a wealth of information that would be otherwise unavailable elsewhere. The problem is when Tom adds this information, it often comes from personal email contact with the person in question and there is no current policy on how to cite this. The above linked discussion has two potential solutions to this problem but I'm sure there may be other suggestions. *The first is to create a blog of these personal communications which can be linked to from MA in the usual manner, perhaps even with a template to assist in the same vein as . *The second is that these personal communications are uploaded to MA as screenshots (with sensitive information removed) and we link to these images from the article. An example of this can be seen here. Personally, I would also suggest a third option, which I suppose is a combination of the two options above which is to create a new page on MA containing the information with proof of its origin (i.e. the email, letter, photograph etc). For obvious reasons, this page would be protected so that only administrators can edit it but new information can be suggested by any user on the talk page as long as they have that proof. I realise that we do try to avoid citing sources from within MA itself to remain impartial and for any other information I agree with this view wholeheartedly. We do, however, have a precedent for this kind of thing with the AOL chat transcripts so it wouldn't be a stretch to do, it would just need to be managed carefully to maintain its integrity as a valid source. And of course, we would have to draft a policy limiting exactly what kinds of things we would permit, being careful to ensure that this is the absolutely last resort and there are no other sources out there we could use. Of course, the other option is to reject this kind of information entirely on the basis that we simply can't cite it in an article, but that would be unfortunate. Whatever the case, I thought it would be a good idea to discuss the issue here and see what the general feeling is. --| TrekFan Open a channel 16:13, March 7, 2018 (UTC) :Do note that, with respect to the AOL transcripts, those were taken off of another site that went down some time ago, and there was no other source for them once that happened. Is this the best way to do it? I don't believe so, but we haven't (yet) come up with an alternative solution unfortunately. -- sulfur (talk) 16:15, March 7, 2018 (UTC) The fact remains they are now hosted on MA as there would be no other way to cite them which is the closest precedent we have, which is why I used it as an example. That said, of course it doesn't mean that because we have the chats here we must also host these communications, it's just a point worthy of note during any discussion. --| TrekFan Open a channel 17:06, March 7, 2018 (UTC) ::It would be possible to create a citation template that would provide relevant information without requiring us to record conversations, since not all communication has conveniently been relegated to impersonal text on a screen, yet. If someone talks to a reporter on the record, the reporter at least should know the who, where, and when of that interaction. If we cite who said something, to whom they said it, how they said it, where (if relevant), and when it was said, I think that would be enough. That said, I would still strongly encourage backups of any primary sources, even if not on site. ::So, for example, if William Shatner were to tell me backstage at a Star Trek convention in Chicago this month that he hated how his boots in TOS were too tight, I would add: "William Shatner said he hated how tight his costume's boots were in TOS. ", which would render a mouse over of "William Shatner to Archduk3 in a conversation at the Chicago Star Trek convention in March 2018." ::Clearly not all of those variables would be required for a simple email, but this would at least define where, when, from and to whom, and how something was known, instead of leaving it to a search through a page history and hopefully a response from whoever added the info. It's not perfect, but it would be better than what we have now, which is not much or a suggestion that they create an account, and this would allow for personal communication with MA contributors without fear of having to go over everything like it was a press release. - 19:43, March 7, 2018 (UTC) I do like that suggestion, Archduk3. It gives us a way to deal with it and keeps things consistent across the wiki. As an extension, perhaps the template could also include another call giving the user the option of linking to a section on the article's talk page where they can explain in further detail how they know this and provide any corroborating evidence they feel necessary, which could be a policy requirement if this template is used (to allow for a written background record to exist on the talk page for future reference). I raise this part in case we get the odd person who feels like adding a comment for the sake of it that may not even be true just 'cos they can. --| TrekFan Open a channel 19:55, March 7, 2018 (UTC)